Nakaw
Amis · mortal · Amis traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Nakaw is the female survivor of the great flood and the ancestress of the Amis. Carried with her brother Sera to the top of Mount Cilangasan in a wooden mortar, she becomes his wife when the two find themselves the last people in the world. Her first children are born as reptiles and vermin, a sign of the disorder of the sibling union, until the sun reveals the rite that lets her bear proper human offspring. Through those children the Amis line begins. As with her brother, the name she bears differs among local versions of the myth, Nakaw being a common Amis woman's name attached to the founding ancestress.
Domains
- ancestry
Powers
- repeoples the world after the flood
Relations
- sibling: SeraBrother and sister, the sole flood survivors.'Rebirth after the Flood', Indigenous Sight (secondary)
- spouse: SeraMarry after the flood to repeople the world.Ho Ting-jui, A Comparative Study of Myths and Legends of Formosan Aborigines (1971) (secondary)
- ally: CidalThe sun instructs the pair in the rite that yields human children.Ho Ting-jui, A Comparative Study of Myths and Legends of Formosan Aborigines (1971) (secondary)
Sources
- Nakaw is the sister and wife of Sera, and with him the ancestress of the Amis in the flood-and-sibling creation myth.: 'Rebirth after the Flood', Indigenous Sight (Indigenous Peoples Cultural Foundation, Taiwan) (secondary); Ho Ting-jui, A Comparative Study of Myths and Legends of Formosan Aborigines (1971) (secondary)